What language do you read?

And I don’t mean whether you can manage Harry Potter in Chinese. Charlie Butler blogged about English versus English the other day. Very interesting. As a non-native reader I used to be foolish enough to believe that English was English. Yes, I know the British have something that differs from what the Americans swear by, but people can get by, can’t they?

Seems not. I remember the little witch looking at the Mrs something-or-other in Blyton’s Castle of Adventure. I went to Mother-of-witch and asked what Mmmrrsss meant. (I tried to pronounce those three letters.) It’s the same as Fru, in Swedish. Once I knew this, I knew this, and I had learnt a new word, and also how it’s meant to be pronounced. I felt cosmopolitan and clever. (I was about eight.) I can still remember what it means.

In fact, I’d go so far as to say that I’m currently living in Britain because of that Mrs. Not because I turned into a Mrs myself. There was something so satisfyingly exotic about all things British. I coped admirably with shillings, and didn’t require them to be turned into öre. Miles can be confusing, but only because you have six British miles to a Swedish one.

Some years ago I read a book by Beverly Naidoo, set in South Africa. It would have been useful knowing how much a Rand is worth, but not essential. Could have looked it up, I daresay. But ‘translating’ it into pounds and pennies wouldn’t have helped. After all, how much is a knut?

You could have footnotes, but they can get a little tedious. A glossary is one solution, but not for too many words, or it’s tempting to skip looking at it.

Reading Agatha Christie can be tricky, because she sometimes uses French, which I don’t speak, and I think the reader is meant to. On the other hand, when I read Adrian McKinty’s Fifty Grand recently, I didn’t object to the Spanish he used. So it’s all relative.

Helen Grant’s The Vanishing of Katharina Linden is a nice proper British English book, except it’s set in Germany and Helen has put German phrases in her story. Words, and whole sentences! I think it adds a very nice flavour. The same goes for Caroline Lawrence using Latin all over her Roman Mysteries. ‘Euge!’ say I.

I think we need some foreign-ness in books. Not just random Chinese, obviously, but anything that belongs to the story. We often talk of dumbing down these days. Translating 50p to one dollar is dumbing down. That’s how people end up not knowing it’s different in the other place.

Just not too different, because we’re mostly he same. Except when we’re not.

Last night I dreamed

that I sat next to Ann Pilling. My dream was set somewhere holiday-ish where the whole witch family had gathered, and there were loads of children’s authors. I ended up sitting next to someone by the name of Ann, but it took me ages to find out who she was.

I wouldn’t be telling you about my dream, if it wasn’t for what Daughter did next. She needed occupying, so being a bookwitch I suggested reading. Of course. I also suggested Michelle Magorian’s A Little Love Song, but sadly it has turned into one of these suggestions where Offspring have to say no, just to keep up tradition. So she went off to see what else there might be and came back with Vote For Baz, by none other than Ann Pilling. Witchy.

I don’t know the book myself, as it’s one of the review cast-offs from Librarian Husband of Cousin, which has been hanging around for a few years. But it was good enough to result in Daughter not doing anything else for a whole day. But she would like it known that the cover sucks.

When Son and Dodo arrived, they proudly mentioned they’d brought a copy of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, with a view to reminding themselves what it’s about. I told them they were idiots, as it’s the only Harry Potter we already have here on holiday, so a waste of a kilo of luggage allowance. They remedied this by reading a copy each, side by side. Then they went to the library for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. The library had no other Harry Potters in English except The Deathly Hallows, and they even had two copies of it. So they have side-by-sided HP7 as well.

The library has been useful in other ways too. Daughter had to have some more audio books to listen to at night, so she found an Alex Rider and Philip Pullman’s The Scarecrow on CD. It’s free and you can keep them for four weeks.

Other than this, we have tidied the book collection a very little. Over the years we have carried spares and jumble sale books for those desperate days when you just have to have something else to read. But unless we are to hang on to lots of old books for any grandchildren we may have, we have quite frankly outgrown some of them. They are now sitting in the Salvation Army bag, waiting to go.

Daughter wanted to relieve the Salvation Army of a second-hand bookcase to put them in, but I felt we didn’t need more shelves. We need fewer books. I prune and re-order every now and then, and we have a passable collection by now. In fact, my former neighbour used to let herself in with the spare key and borrow books every winter. Well, I always wanted to be a librarian.

One book that is going nowhere, is I Am David, which Daughter read a few days ago, at long long last. She asked about the title, which she thought she had overheard when her brother listened to the audio book. They are the last words of the book, and just thinking about it made me want to cry a little. She finished the book and then told me she could find nothing sad…

What’s a witch to do?

Magyk, Quidditch and Fantastic Beasts

I do like ‘fake’ books that belong with books. You know, like J K Rowling’s Fantastic Beasts & Where To Find Them, which is supposedly written by Newt Scamander. And her other fake, Quidditch Through The Ages ‘by’ Kennilworthy Whisp. It’s fun.

These are the ones published eight years ago for Comic Relief, with a quarter of the price of 1 galleon 11 Sickles going to the charity. Now Bloomsbury are bringing them out again, in association with the obscure publisher Obscurus Books and Whizz Hard Books. Albus Dumbledore has written the blurbs on the backs of the books, which is good going for someone dead. At least he has a sense of humour.

You’d be surprised how much help I’ve had from these two books. Over the years I’ve needed to produce lots of quizzes and wordsearches and stuff, and these brief volumes are gold-mines of information. Not all fervent Harry Potter fans have studied them in detail – yet – which means one can still baffle the odd know-it-all.

On the same day The Magykal Papers, the companion to the world of Septimus Heap, is available. It looks pretty good, and is exactly the kind of thing for keen Septimus Heap fans. Journals, recipes, guides and facts about famous wizards in a fun looking book.

I have to come clean and let the world know I have only read the first Septimus Heap novel. I would have read them all, but this witch is seriously running out of time. I have the books standing by for the eventuality of house arrest, which I’ve mentioned before. Offspring and I met Angie Sage in Gothenburg a few years ago. Hope that counts for something. Preferably in my favour.

Witch journalism

Shock, horror! None of the children’s laureates chose Harry Potter for their favourite children’s books!

Well, why would they? They are old people. (No offense intended. I’m old myself.) They will pick what they liked as children, or something that stands out as excellent over decades of reading. Harry will be chosen by the children’s laureates in forty years’ time.

I just don’t get this newspaper/journalism thing. Are they stupid, or do they go out of their way to appear as stupid as they think we, the readers, are? Or do they hate Harry with a vengeance, so must rub his, or rather JKR’s, face in it as often as the opportunity arises?

Don’t worry about me. I might have got out of bed on the wrong side this morning.

But it would be nice if things weren’t always dumbed down or ‘over-scandalised’. I love Harry Potter, but even I can see that it’s possible to discuss children’s books without him.

And of the books listed in the Guardian article, the ancient witch has read very few. Nesbit. Treasure Island. Have naturally seen Mary Poppins the film. Have to hope that I have read all that was not listed. I’m not laureate material, that much is clear.

Left hanging?

I’m near the end of a new book, and I sincerely hope it ends when it ends. Cliffhangers can be good, but right now I can do without them.

Patrick Ness wrote one with his The Knife of Never Letting Go. There was a blog in the Guardian about his book and cliffhangers in general, a couple of weeks ago. It seems that his cliffhanger is followed by a new book out now, that is also a cliffhanger. Aargh…

If Patrick’s second book had been to hand at the end of book one, I would have reached for it. His cliffhanger is very cliffhangery. But now, I’m not sure. It’s not that I don’t want to, but my urge has subsided. And I seem to have had a narrow escape by not reading The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins, which was very, very highly praised my my young reviewers last year. Their wait is not over yet.

It must be tempting to end a book, leaving the reader hanging on for dear life, and they’ll come back and buy the next book, too. But will they?

I know we all waited for Harry Potter. But he wasn’t about cliffhangers. And the waiting worked best for adults and those children who began at the right age. Twelve to eighteen months is a lifetime for the really young. For the older ones, they may well have moved on to other reading by the time the sequel turns up.

The reason I’m concerned about my current read, is that among the comments from young readers printed in my proof copy, there is a wish for more. To my thinking, this story has to end here. In the ‘disaster’ genre, you don’t want a new disaster next year for any surviving characters.

Or do you?

Make me laugh

Searched the house for some humour this morning. As you can tell I’ve lost it, slightly. But why is it that books aren’t as funny as I think they used to be? Not every book I read has to be funny, but it’d be nice if more of them were. Some books these days are really very earnest. It’s important to be earnest, too, but, you know, I want to have fun. Sometimes I want to laugh out loud, but often it’d be enough to smile a little over an amusing plot or clever use of language.

People like to think JKR is boring, but that’s not the case. The bit where the Weasleys break through the Dursleys’ electric fire is very funny. The scene in the PM’s office is pretty good. And take Philip Pullman. He’s funny. When the silly old Scarecrow says he’s so stupid he will have to be an officer when he joins the army. That’s what I call humour.

And I can’t remember where and when I said this, but Michelle Magorian’s dance with the GIs in A Little Love Song, with oranges flying all over the place is hilarious. Better not return to the Vicar Of Nibbleswicke. Dahl wasn’t always as funny as people say, a lot of the time, but the toilet humour in Nibbleswicke is great fun.

So, am I childish in wanting more laughs, while still reading ‘good’ books? Am I wanting to laugh too frequently?

King’s Cross platforms

All that the Resident IT Consultant could say about Eva Ibbotson’s The Secret of Platform 13, was that Virgin doesn’t have anything to do with King’s Cross. That’s train nerds for you. Actually, he did say he liked it a lot, too. The Virgin connection is because the book we just rescued from Daughter’s shelves, was a freebie from Sir Richard, back when they wanted to impress families travelling by train.

At long last I’ve read the book that surely JKR must also have read. If she didn’t, it would be a real piece of proof that extremely similar ideas come floating through space at a particular time. No point listing all the similarities, because the stories aren’t the same. They are both a lot of fun, each in their own way.

I’ll begin by guessing that Eva is no fan of the country’s first female prime minister, judging by some of the more memorable characters in this book. Handbags and hairdos.

Platform 13 hides a door to an island that sounds like paradise. Like with so many trains, you can only get there very infrequently. In this case every nine years. A baby prince is kidnapped on one occasion, and needs to be found and brought back nine years later. It’s a Harry and Dudley kind of set-up, and there are many, many funny goings-on in London before things go as they should. This is a good, old-fashioned story, so you can tell from the beginning what will happen, but you don’t know how.

Good is good, and bad is bad. And I’m sure there is a reason why bad people are so often very fat. But I do have to say one thing in defence of the bad mother in this story. If you specifically ask for soup with no bits in, then a few leaves of parsley do not make it prettier or better. Think about it.

Being charitable

It was only as I got to the Guardian Money pages late on Sunday, that it occurred to me how charitably I’d been behaving all weekend. I had been looking forward to a quiet weekend doing nothing but rest and read. (Well, as some people know, I had actually hoped for a very different weekend, but since that couldn’t be…) Then I was hi-jacked by Daughter, who after months and months, and in some cases years, had decided to clear out. And would I help? So I sat in her armchair and directed her as she cleared. Hard work directing, but someone has to.

So, the bookcases are dusted. Books have been put in alphabetical order, excepting the colour co-ordinated Jacqueline Wilson shelves. (Less sure what Dumbledore is doing there.) Books have been re-discovered. But above all, books have been packed into bags for Oxfam. A few books have also, unfortunately been handed back to me, but now that I see some spare space on Daughter’s shelves, I may have to sneak some back. Because I have no room.

Videos have been, not so much got rid of, but been put further out of reach. We simply must keep all those old Disney films, and the Friends episodes, but not for everyday consumption.

And a great number of audio books have been consigned to new ownership. We were once very big customers at Cover-to-Cover, but there comes a time when even Daughter has finished with some of her beloved stories. They have all been heavily used.

But I’ll be interested to see how long those gaps will last, and how soon the Harry Potter figure will have to give way. And someone will have to traipse to Oxfam with the book bags.

So, if I don’t want to read this?

I tried a new way of dealing with the big question of what to read next. I read a page or a chapter or two of my already sorted and prioritised books. Plus a new one that looked promising. A kind of literary ‘just jump straight into the – possibly – cold water, witch! And don’t dither!’

It wasn’t cold, as much as lukewarm, which means that every single book I tried I could have continued reading. But I thought to myself, ‘what is the point?’ Several books were OK, but no more. I could see piles of very tempting ones, that I know for a fact will be good, and I just felt so depressed and jumped straight to the new (to me) Sara Paretsky.

Bliss. I feel so much happier now. (No, now is not a good time to suggest more chocolate.)

I think these books I’ve just rejected will be very satisfying reads to many children. Just not to this overgrown child. But too many of the books feel like pedestrian stories, put together competently enough, but with no extra oomph. They all think they could be the new Harry Potter, but for all HP’s shortcomings, I had fun with him from the word go. Very little humour in this recent batch. I need fun.

Publishers have the right to publish what they like, but could we have a little more new “new” stuff please? One successful author has told me what he/she would like to write next. The publisher thinks not. And I happen to think the idea sounds really good. It would be different, and I assume written with his/her normal flair. The faithful fans are sure to buy the new book, just because it’s by X.

And then there are Nick Green’s books, again. They have everything that I’ve been missing in what I just gave up on. And to move on to adult crime, I will yet again mention Declan Burke, who had his The Big O published in the US in the autumn. Thanks to the financial crisis the publisher has dropped the sequel (it has yo-yoed back and forth under two titles, and I no longer feel sure which is the current one), which is a very short sighted thing to do with such a marvellous story. It, too, has everything I want in a book.

The Boy Who Lived

This is Harry Potter condensed. I hope Neil Gaiman won’t be offended, because he’s his own man, but The Graveyard Book really has a lot in common with that other boy’s life story.

Bod – short for Nobody – is a very special, but normal, boy. Rescued from being murdered as a toddler, he ends up living in a deserted graveyard. Who knew dead people could be so lovely? Bod has a good, if somewhat unusual, life growing up with the graveyard inhabitants.

There is a prize on his head, and he is continously in danger, but the skills taught him by the dead people help him. Unlike the other famous boy survivor, Bod’s adventures need only one book to reach a conclusion, and a very satisfying one, too.

There’s a lot of good advice for the living in this book, and Bod proves to be very talented at dealing with bullies, as well as those more dangerous people who are after him.

I’ve never thought much about what the Dance Macabre might really be, but Neil’s version is a good one. And if you don’t want to look up dead US presidents, then no. 33 is Truman. Had rather hoped it might be Reagan.

This is a very, very good read.

I’m off to visit a graveyard.